


Moonlight Sonata

by Naqia



Series: Moonlight Sonata [1]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, Infertility, Infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 07:29:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/976108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naqia/pseuds/Naqia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I should have never started this in the first place, though I don’t regret one minute I’ve spent with her. With Katniss, the woman whom I’ve grown to love, despite Delly, whom I’ve vowed to be faithful to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moonlight Sonata

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: This story deals with infertility and infidelity!
> 
> Disclaimer: As usual, I don't own The Hunger Games. Never have, never will.

I watch her in her sleep. Her long silky hair flows around her head and shoulders, her face now aglow in the dim moonlight shining in from the window behind me. She looks so peaceful when in her slumber, so unlike when she is awake. Her facial features are relaxed, like a child’s. She looks so much younger now, more like the 23 years that she is.  
I cannot help but watch her, soaking in every detail for the times to come, the times that I must be without her. If I could just gather the courage to end it … Maybe courage is not the right word for it; it’s not only that, I also need to find the will.  
Looking at her breathing calmly, her body barely hidden under the sheets, the curves that tuck so perfectly into my own, the way she embraces the white pillow in her sleep. Scarcely audible, she mumbles something, but I cannot make out the words. She talks in her sleep. She hates it but I think it’s funny.  
I don’t know how often I will see her again. I should have ended it months ago, never started this in the first place, though I don’t regret one minute I’ve spent with her. With Katniss, the woman whom I’ve grown to love, despite Delly, whom I’ve vowed to be faithful to. I hate myself for it.  
I always despised two-timers, but now I……… Becoming one of them made me understand how one can love the one and not leave the other. No one would ever expect me to cheat on my wife. Before my first night with Katniss I wouldn’t have either. One cannot miss something one never had, but after I had that one night, it was painfully obvious.  
I was successful in my job, I had –have- a loving wife, I was a perfect husband. I still am, in a way. The only thing that was missing when this relationship started was a child. Delly loves children dearly, as do I. A lot of the moments I have seen her happy are related to children, to our nephews and nieces, to the children at work, a sparkle in her eyes when she told me about her days at dinner. Thus, as soon as I believed we were secure enough be parents; enough money, a nice home, and as soon as I became a successful junior architect for Heavensbee’s, we tried, Delly and I.  
But even after a year and a half without birth control, without condoms, she wasn’t pregnant. I had to see Delly getting her hopes up month per month, every day of being late she grew more excited, every time it was another false alarm she fell deeper into desperation, she fell apart and it took more and more strength to gather the courage to go on, to try again and pray. Being a kindergarten teacher and looking at happy kids and overjoyed parents didn’t help the situation, it only drew her deeper in, the sad look on her face became more permanent, more prominent not only to me but also to others. She refused to talk about it though I knew it was constantly weighed on her mind.  
I tried to make amends for her, spoiled her with holidays in Europe, a shopping trip in New York with no limitations on my credit card, days at some spa with her best and under this circumstances fortunately childless friend Leevy, a new condo she was to decorate the way she wanted it. I was there for her every night she cried herself into sleep, but to be honest, it was exhausting. It was exhausting to build her up despite those difficulties, it was impossible to say no to her about anything; it was unthinkable to deny her sex which became an act out of sheer despair, not out of love. Before I met Katniss, sex had been reduced to the act of making a baby, again and again and again. It was as much Delly’s fault as it was mine, hers for pushing me and mine for letting her do this to me.  
When it became too much for her, she came up with the idea for a check-up in a specialized IVF clinic if everything was all right with me, because she knew she was. I did not ask at which point in time she had the check on herself. That something could not be right with me had never crossed my mind, but after the initial shock I only agreed to prove to her we had to be patient, that we would have our baby.  
I have to admit it has been one of the most humiliating moments in my life to be in that sterile room with a choice of porno films and magazines and a transparent plastic cup to fill with my semen. I could barely look at it when I was done. A sperm donor, that was what I thought of myself, not a husband, not a boyfriend, not even a lover.  
It had felt like a walk of shame to go in there and everybody had known what I was about to do behind that closed door, the nurses, the doctors, the other patients, Delly who had come with me. Whether to make sure I kept the appointment or to give me encouragement is something I think I’m better off not knowing.  
It felt as if everybody was staring at me when I went in, it felt as if I was about to do something forbidden. Of course it wasn’t but it was something that I considered to be private and everybody knowing made me uncomfortable.  
They had tried their best to make it look cozy, homey even with a comfortable armchair, pastel yellow walls and matching drapes with a pretty, flowery design, but all I could think about was the force to have to masturbate in there. How many other men had been in here before me?  
It took me over 10 minutes to even relax, another seven to turn my efforts into half a boner with my hasty stroking to get it over with soon. That’s when I decided for a film for aid. Maybe to not rely on my fantasy where my thoughts seemed to always travel back to the reasons why I was in room number 12. The girls in the film helped to focus, they were dark haired and long-legged with chocolate brown eyes, nothing blonde like my wife. I came when the taller one finished off the petite one with her delicate tongue. Though she would never get to know, I couldn’t look Delly in the eye when I came out, humiliated to have done that, ashamed it was easier to fantasize with those than about woman physically similar to her.  
My whole life changed when we got the results, I had been coming home rather late after working overtime on a Friday in June, tired, my head occupied with the next project I was planning. She was in the living room, her head covered in her hands, sobbing, a sheet of paper thrown rather carelessly on the table. I knew immediately what it was without having to look at it once, for her crying red swollen and puffy eyes accused me from afar. As if it was my fault. She was crying harder by the time that I read the letter. I had to sit down, not trusting my shaking legs anymore.  
I don’t remember the exact words, but I understood that the odds were not in our favor, or better to say my favor. That chances of me becoming a father the way nature intended was less than 0.01 percent, that I am basically infertile due to low sperm count. And that they recommended an appointment with the fertility doctor to see what can be done about it.  
It took all my strength to not cry, to be strong for her and be her shoulder to lean on. She needed me to soothe her that we would find a way. I reached out for her with my fingers trembling, touching her for the first time since I had come in, she pushed me away rudely and jumped up. She declared it my fault, our marriage a failure and how she was bound to me, to me with whom she could never have children. That all she ever wanted was to have kids -- of course I had known that – and now couldn’t because of me, her infertile husband. I let her yell at me, too stunned to reply, too shocked to think of anything beside the insults she was shouting at me in between the sobs.  
Despite the painful words, I knew she didn’t mean it; she was just hurt, unable to cope with the facts yet. Again I tried to hug her in an attempt to calm her, but she freed herself and in her anger wished me to leave. When I didn’t move, she shoved me outside and locked the door. I hammered against it, shouted at her to let me in, for once not caring about my neighbors, but I only heard her weep. She didn’t open. The door between the two of us as a symbol of how we had grown apart over the months, of how she did not trust me to help her now. The realization hurt.  
With my car keys and my wallet in the pocket of my suit, I somehow drove off after having stared at the garage for quite some while not understanding anything anymore. The same questions circled in my head. Why? Why us? Why did this have to happen to me? Why others could reproduce like rabbits and not deserve any of their children, not give a fuck about them and we were denied even one. Because of me. Because of my insufficiency. I was fucked up.  
How I found my way into Abernathy’s sports bar in my half-conscious state of mind that night I still don’t know. Being in the cheaper parts of town we call the Seam, though I had never been there. Without these circumstances probably never would have, but that’s where I found Katniss.  
I had parked my car outside of a bar when I finally knew what to do with myself. I am still not overly proud of this decision, but since it brought Katniss into my life, it has been most likely one of the best moments for someone to willingly choose to get wasted in history.  
She was already there when I arrived, sitting at the bar and obviously enjoying a beer and a flirt with the bronze haired bartender she called Finn. She was laughing, I felt like burying myself in sorrow. Leaving four empty stools between us, which was the farthest distance I could get from her and the guy to my right. I sat at the bar also. I began with beer, more beer, then an ale when they showed a recap of some sports game, I think it was football. Soon the bar was merely full, but the stools between us were still empty and I would have liked to keep it that way.  
When the bronze haired, self-declared, ever wide smiling beau put a shot in front of me, I already had one beer too many. Yet one or more beers too less to consider myself wasted enough to dare to get home and deal with Delly, deal with my … deficiency.  
My cell was in front of me, I stared at it as if it would make it ring, saw the minutes passing on the display though I couldn’t tell now which time it was. I half wished Delly would call, the other half wasn’t getting over the fact she called me a loser. Right now I only wanted to forget, but I wasn’t drunk enough for that yet, the yellow liquid in front of me still refused to answer me my question.  
“You look like you need it”, Katniss said pointing at the shot when she had without my notice approached me and introduced herself. I refused to answer, not ready to come out of my self-pity. I downed it with her though, one step closer to forgetting. A Hemingway, she told me, her favorite. I couldn’t care less.  
She began talking to me, about college, about her sister, about her job at Abernathy’s, we started drinking together, I drank and she kept me company, I forgot about staring at my phone. One Hemingway, two, three, too many to bother counting. Despite my lack in enthusiasm or attempts to make conversation, she stuck with me the whole evening, came closer, her right thigh occasionally touching mine, first only short, then longer, too long to be pure coincidence. Truthfully I was past the point of caring. One time it never left but was followed by her hand resting on my knee. The alcohol loosened my tongue a bit, I said nothing about it, but I told her my name and that I was architect, her hand wandered a bit more upward towards my groin, leaving a tickling sensation at every spot she touched. I let her.  
I think I mentioned some other random things or two, like my favorite color. Finally her lips found boldly mine. There was the bittersweet taste of grapefruit lingering on her soft mouth as she nibbled on my bottom lip, her tongue seeking entrance to mine and not only I granted it, but I reciprocated not wasting a second thought to whether someone I knew could see it. Not wasting a thought about Delly.  
Her kiss was fierce, fiery, determined. Even in my state of mind I knew what she was up to and I did nothing to stop it. If I was honest with myself, I did not even want to stop it, it felt too good to be actually wanted and not only in terms of reciprocating, to forget. By the time the bar emptied, my hand was eagerly running down her bare back, my fingers followed the soft and warm skin above her spine. How come that I had not noticed the halter dress before?, I had asked myself and the answer I now have is simple enough: Because I didn’t give a shit about anything until then.  
Delly was far, very far back in my drunken conscience when I eventually followed her to her apartment nearby. All I could keep thinking about was the imagination of me in her, her lips sucking on my dick, the way she would taste.  
We wasted no time, as soon as she had locked the door, I threw her against it, kissing her, tasting her in the attempt to feel again, to just fuck without expectations, without high wishes, without counting the days when the next break-down was about to come. Proving to myself that I was a man.  
Now I just needed her. All doubts or objections were blurred by the alcohol and her enticing scent of lemon and mint. I just needed her, needed the release. I made my way down her necks as my hands fiddled impatiently with the knot of her dress.  
Even in my drunken state, I still remember details about what happened in her apartment. How could I forget such a night?  
The soft moan that escaped her as my mouth sucked on one erect nipple while my fingers played with the other one, cupping it, teasing it. I couldn’t help but compare them with Delly’s in that moments, they were smaller, just a handful, just perfect.  
Her hands messed my hair in the meanwhile, it turned me on even more, my dick already twitching in my boxer briefs. When I trailed upwards again, kissing her roughly, she began stroking me through the fabric of my trousers. That was the moment when I entirely lost it.  
We dropped all clothes on the way to bed, even that lacy thong that had seemed to tease me on the way to her apartment,  
She hissed as I licked my way up her thighs, sometimes interrupted by a kiss. The delicious smell of her arousal greeting me from mid-thigh. She couldn’t help but spread her legs in agony when I savored her.  
“Fuck you”, she then muttered when I stopped. I think I only smirked then, though she hardly could have seen that in the dark.  
“Turn around” I demanded not willing to wait any longer for my release, she was wet and I was fucked up and horny.  
“Wait.” She grabbed to her left and fished a condom out of somewhere. Right. Right, she didn’t know this then, but it surely had reminded me why I happened to be here. Still on my knees I only panted, I waited for her to hand it to me, but instead, she climbed from under me and I enjoyed her small mouth on my cock slowly rolling down the condom, something Delly never had done. Delly …. I know I groaned despite it. Her kiss tasted a bit like rubber.  
“Turn around”, I hissed and this time she obeyed offering me her slit, showing me her cheeks, I wasted no time thrusting inside and fucking her, I needed to show my ego, needed to feel like a man despite everything, confirmed by each time I slammed inside her, every slap of my balls against her skin.  
Even now, I think I will never forget this night, as blurry as the memories might be, not her moans, not her fingers accidentally brushing me as she helped herself getting off. This was a simple, angry, mind-blowing fuck for release and to forget. It hasn’t been the only one since.  
The next morning, we both knew it was only the night, though in the light it was the first time I could appreciate every part of her body. Her grey stormy eyes, the birthmark on her hip, her small breasts, her olive skin, the way she moved, she was sexy in every way.  
When I finally went home after a shower, an attempt to wash-off my deceit, Delly ran into my arms as I was still on the threshold. Hugging me, kissing me, whispering sweet reassuring nothings into my ear, shedding some tears. Due to that I felt even worse than I already did but also happy, happy to have her back. I don’t know how long we stood there, holding each other close, me inhaling her rose-scented hair.  
She was sorry for treating me like this, I tried to avoid her eye, I really couldn’t, I was still too plagued by my cheating, I nearly confessed but didn’t want to make it any worse. In the end we both cried together, we wanted to make us work, it felt good to be in this together again. Delly never questioned where I had been. I never told her.  
I loved my wife and tried to forget about Katniss. We made an appointment with Doctor Aurelius, weighing our chances with in vitro fertilization, speaking about possibilities for my low count. He saw no chances without IVF. We made tender love for the first time again after that, also the first time without the pressure of being … successful, because we just wanted to, because we loved each other, feelings returned that had long faded, a longing for her body, for her, for Delly.  
After some time I stopped feeling overly guilty, fooling myself that everything went back to normal, we grew a couple again and I nearly forgot about Katniss. Though I loved my wife I couldn’t help myself thinking about her sometimes, couldn’t help thinking about how my sex life with Delly was nothing compared to the sensation with Katniss. Sometimes, her face even popped up in my mind, when Delly was giving head, wondering how Katniss would have felt around me without that condom.  
We decided to do it, Delly and I. Speaking frankly, the alternative was unthinkable, so she began writing a journal about her irregular menstrual circle for more than half a year. If this was about to happen, we needed to be absolutely sure about the point of time. I didn’t want to imagine what would happen if it didn’t happen.  
It was hard to accept the fact as such, but I could never stand to confess to anyone that I wasn’t man enough to become a father. It was humiliating to even sit by when Delly told our closest friends. I didn’t want her to tell our families, I knew my mother would come up with a remark that I could not stand to hear, knew my father would be to compassionate to bear to make up for my mother’s behavior also, my brothers would probably fool about it to distract me, they always meant well but who could jokes on his manhood easily?  
Though I loved Delly’s family I didn’t want her to say anything about it, I didn’t want to be the incapable in-law, my ego forbid it. So this just left Madge and Gale, because I knew Delly needed someone to talk to, for her I swallowed my pride, but still I was embarrassed. Of course they had known that something was up because of how strangely we had been acting; they were the right people to tell, they knew how to deal with us and our fucked-up situation.  
We lived healthier for a start, ate less fat, it began feeling we were a couple again, hell, without the stress she had put on me I began to enjoy us again, not only sexually but emotionally. She had her lows when everything seemed to overwhelm her, but it was easier now to build her up. She threw her fits accusing me of being incapable when she read that she had to inject hormones herself daily, clearly overreacting because she had this childish fear of syringes. Knowing she would overcome this, I would stand by her side. We were going to make it.  
I like to think we grew closer than we had ever been before, but inside of me, there was still this longing for Katniss lingering under the surface. There were days, when I didn’t think about her at all and then the memory came up that suddenly, surprising me with boners in the most inconvenient situations.  
The sex with Delly was … I don’t know how to say it, it was great in a way, but after 9 years and 6 of it married there was nothing new, routine had crept in that had never bothered me before, there was no more adventure, no more learning about each other’s body, nothing within our limits that we hadn’t done yet.  
That was the thing about Delly, she was reliable, but that also meant she was predictable. Before Katniss it hadn’t troubled me, I had seen it kind of reassuringly, but it surely did now. It nagged at my inside no matter how hard I tried to fight it, often enough by seducing Delly instead to compensate. If she ever was surprised by my newly discovered amount of need, she didn’t show it.  
I wouldn’t be here today in this hotel room with Katniss if Delly had been sufficient. It may sound cruel, and I guess it is, I mean, it was not her fault after all, but over the time I realized Delly wasn’t enough to fulfill the fire in me. If it was because of the memory of our night together or if it also was to prove my to my ego that I could be a man not only to my wife, I honestly cannot answer.  
Whatever made me call Delly telling her I forgot about a late meeting and return to Abernathy’s sports bar instead is nothing that I shouldn’t put my head in shame for. The right answer should have been that I wanted confirm myself that it was a one-night-stand with emphasis on “one night” and that neither Katniss nor I had any interest in each other after that, if she was there. I didn’t know which option was preferable.  
And there she was, working behind the counter, even more stunning than three month ago when I had last seen her. Even that over-sized shirt with the, in my opinion, distasteful logo didn’t betray her beauty. As soon as I saw her again, the way she swung her hair behind her head when it was in her way, I know despite what I kept reminding myself, I wanted her badly, yet I didn’t admit to myself I was a goner. I still want her and that evening I learned she also did when she kissed me dragging me in the back though I saw her gaze flicker over my wedding band one moment too long.  
We met the day after. And the one after that. We have been meeting at least twice a month since and until now I had no intention of stopping it, always waiting for our next meeting. I know I must end this, but I don’t want to. I love Delly, but I also love Katniss, just in two different ways.  
Sometimes we meet at her home, sometimes very cliché in a motel out of town. Nearly always during my working hours before I return to the office, never overnight. If I’m to go on a business trip, I take her with me, giving her the money to book a double in her name. I hate myself for doing this. To Delly, who doesn’t deserve to be treated this way, to Katniss for putting her in that position. But I hated myself the most for becoming the kind of person I always despised, yet I cannot stop myself from doing it again. Katniss had ignited a fire in me that even burns all the guilt I feel.  
Delly is offering me the family I always wanted, grants to be a steady center of my life that I can always return to, who will always be there for me. But Katniss, she’s become my fire and my strength, to build me up when things get hard again with Delly. I literally waited for the day when she would tell me she had a new boyfriend, because I knew I wouldn’t end this then. A new boyfriend never occurred, but who was I to complain?  
In the months I‘ve known her, she has not only become my lover but also my confidante. She knows I’m married and she accepts it to only be the second. In a weak moment after a fight with Delly, I even told her about my issue. I had been afraid of her reaction, somehow I hoped it would make her leave if I wasn’t a real man, because I couldn’t turn my back on her, but all she did was capture my mouth with her lips after my confession before she trailed down my body. I suppose sucking my dick was her own weird way of showing me that she didn’t think less of me.  
Katniss knows of our IVF plan, but what happens after that is a weak point we tend to avoid. Me because of what I know I must do, she … I don’t know. She tried to laugh it off every time I made hints or silence me with kisses when the ice became too thin. It’s a bridge I will have to cross soon.  
On the one hand, I know she takes things casually, saying she was only just enjoying life too much to tie herself to someone; on the other hand, I know she has grown to love me in her own special way. Of course she wouldn’t admit it, this isn’t Katniss’ way, but when we were at a bar once during one of my business trips and she came back from smoking outside and there was that woman with me, flirting, smiling, making her cleavage very prominent, and Katniss put on her sugary sweet smile and flung her arms around me, her eyes had that fiery spark ... It was then that I knew she cared about me more deeply than I ever wanted her to-- which made me selfishly happy and afraid of the day when it had to end at the same time.  
She mumbles again in her sleep, it is dawn now and I know she will wake up soon, finding me in the armchair opposite of her, watching her in her sleep. I crawl in behind her under the covers.  
My fingers follow the curve of her body under the sheets, travelling down to her cheeks in a curve to her abdomen. She mumbles something and turns around to me, her eyes still closed but I know she is awake.  
“Morning beauty”, I whisper and peck her lips. She mumbles something in reply, still too sleepy to form coherent words.  
One last time until I tell her, I promise myself. I will tell Katniss. One last time until I have to return home to my pregnant wife.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for PromptsinPanem on tumblr. You may check out all the other awesome works for "Seven deadly Sins" published there!
> 
> Thank you Mary, for working your magic once again and making my mess readable, and also for suggesting to submit this for the prompts. ILY!  
> Thank you fremus, for pre-reading and holding my hand throughout the publishing process (ILY, but only if you don't slap me ;)).


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